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Recycling centres in Surrey could be closed or only open at the busiest times. The plans are being looked at by the county council which says it's under increasing financial pressure following government cuts. Another option is to introduce a charge for dropping off non-household waste such as rubble and plasterboard. A consultation is underway.

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Special food waste recycling containers are being delivered to homes across Oxford Credit: Oxford City Council

Oxford City Council is to spend £900,000 on promoting the recycling of food waste over the next three years. Officials are hoping to recycle up to 300 tonnes more of the material each year. The project began in April and is due to finish in March 2017. One of the measures includes distributing special containers and bins to four thousand council flats.

"We will provide all flats in Oxford with weekly food waste collections just as we have for all family houses in the city.

"Tonnes of food are sent to landfill in Oxford every year, where it creates damaging methane. Now more households will be able to recycle their discarded food, which will help the environment and produce compost and electricity."

She's the equivalent of about 78 in human years, she carried around 30 million passengers and did thousands of cross-channel trips but, as we showed you last week, the Pride of Calais met a somewhat undignified end, being deliberately crashed into the shore at a recycling yard in Turkey.

Now her captain has talked to Meridian about what it was like bringing her days to an end. David Johns reports, speaking to the ship's former Master, Paul Wood.

Ashford’s domestic recycling rates have more than trebles since the introduction of the new recycling and refuse service.

The borough has previously been known as the worst recycler in the country with just 14% of its collected domestic waste sent for recycling. It is now at 50%.

Since a new service was rolled out by the council in July, Ashford residents have recycled nearly 4,900 tonnes of dry recyclables, waste food and green waste.

Residents switched from weekly refuse collections to alternate weekly recycling and refuse collections, and a weekly food waste collection – a service used by the top recycling authorities in the country.

This very encouraging performance indicates that Ashford should be well within the top 50 local authorities in the country – a far cry from propping up the bottom of the county and country league tables.